It’s Millionaire Monday! The second Millionaire Chess tournament was held in Las Vegas this weekend, and the playoffs will be held today. I’m very excited to see that a couple of my Facebook friends are having sensational tournaments.
Mike Zaloznyy is playing in the Open section, and in spite of having a FIDE rating under 2200 (his USCF is 2277) he is more than holding his own. He has a 4-3 score with a win in round 7 against an International Master. Unfortunately, he did not make it to the Millionaire Monday playoff because there were four players in the under-2400 group with scores of 4½ or higher. However, he is still playing because the Open section (unlike the other sections) has a round 8 and round 9 for people who don’t make it to the playoff. He still has a shot at the fifth-place prize (for under-2400 players) of $4000.
Also, in the Under-2200 section, Ted Castro of the NorCal House of Chess has been tearing it up, making the playoff with a 6-1 score. So he is guaranteed an $8000 prize (!) and has a chance to win $38,000! Can you imagine that? It’s like a full year’s salary for one chess tournament.
Good skill to both Mike and Ted!
Now it wouldn’t be Millionaire Chess if there wasn’t some controversy. The big controversy yesterday was in the Open section, where Luke McShane and Hikaru Nakamura played a 9-move draw with a threefold repetition:
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cd 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 Ng4 7. Bc1 Nf6 8. Be3 Ng4 9. Bc1 Nf6 ½-½
The tournament organizer, Maurice Ashley, is a staunch opponent of grandmaster draws. He made all the players sign an agreement before the tournament saying that there would be no draws in under 30 moves. But the agreement has a huge loophole in it. It acknowledges that there are times in chess when the best move for each player is to repeat the position, and forcing one of the players to deviate would put them at a competitive disadvantage. If that is the case in the arbiter’s opinion, the result can stand.
However, that’s clearly not the case here. White has lots of other options besides 6. Be3. Black has other options besides 6. … Ng4. The players said in their interviews, “But I didn’t have time to prepare anything else.” (McShane) “But McShane won a nice game earlier in the tournament against 6. … e5.” (Nakamura) “But I was so tired.” (Both of them.)
They’re all excuses. But in the end, the result stood. Ashley consulted with FIDE arbiters and concluded that because there was no evidence of collusion, the players could not be forfeited.
In Ashley’s interview, you could tell he was really mad. He called GM draws a “scourge on chess,” a “travesty,” etc. He said that chess could never be a televised sport if the players don’t actually play the games they were supposed to, and he compared it to two football teams agreeing to a draw after the first quarter of the Super Bowl. Advertisers, sponsors, fans would be up in arms. He pledged to keep working with FIDE to find a solution.
I know this is an old debate, but does anybody have any new and creative ideas to avoid GM draws? My idea would be to have the players simply start over, with whatever time they have already used deducted from their clocks, but with colors reversed. The player with Black now plays White. Possibly, as an extra wrinkle to keep them from repeating the previous game, we could say that neither player is allowed to play a move in the first 10 moves that creates a position that appeared in their first game.
Another question I’d be curious about: How many of my readers have ever played a GM draw? I’ll admit that I did once. It was the Roosevelt Open in Ohio, 1993 I think. I was tied for first going into the last round, and I was paired against the other player who was tied for first. We agreed to a draw in 7 moves. It wasn’t pre-arranged, but we played an opening line that I knew nothing about and I didn’t want to have to learn in such an important game. Before that game I was always in the camp of people who thought GM draws were dishonorable. After that game I realized how great the temptation is, and ever since then I have been much quieter about it. You don’t know what it’s like until you’ve been in that position.
Anyway, that was yesterday and this is today. There are big checks to be handed out, and it should be exciting. The prizes in the open section are $100,000 for first, $50,000 for second, $25,000 for third and $16,000 for fourth.
In the open section, the playoffs will be between Alex Lenderman, Le Quang Liem, Yu Yangyi, and Hikaru Nakamura. Yes, Nakamura snuck into the fourth spot by winning a nine-man playoff. If you want to watch the action, click over to https://millionairechess.com/millionaire-chess-2015. The semifinals start at 11:00 am (45 minutes from now as I’m writing this.)
